Conclusion

This free course, Icarus: entering the world of myth, has offered you a talk-through of three ways of narrating a myth and the rich interaction of its representations in very different cultural contexts, centuries apart. We hope that this has given you some sense of the complexity of a myth’s function and meaning. As many of us will have encountered Greek and Roman myths in our childhood, we may occasionally feel that the complex categorisations and the search for subtle meanings in familiar stories can constitute the death of innocence in the face of theory. However, there is no reason why we should not derive great pleasure from reading from the outset with a critical perspective; Ovid’s narratives do not simply invite us, they compel us to do just that.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A330 Myth in the Greek and Roman worlds [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .